The present disclosure generally relates to systems and methods for monitoring medical adherence and compliance. More particularly, and without limitation, the disclosed embodiments relate to smart packaging of medications allowing monitoring of a patient's use of medication.
Medication adherence is the act of timely filling or refilling prescriptions for medications. Medication compliance is the act of taking medication on schedule or as prescribed by a physician. According to the National Council on Patient Information and Education, poor medication adherence can lead to unnecessary disease progression and complications, reduced functional abilities and quality of life, additional medical costs and physician visits, increased use of expensive, specialized medical resources, and unneeded medication changes. Medication noncompliance can also lead to adverse effects—the average length of hospital stays due to medication noncompliance is 4.2 days. In the United States, 12 percent of people are 0% compliant (i.e., do not take their medication at all) even after they fill the prescription (i.e., are adherent).
There are a number of reasons why people are nonadherent and/or noncompliant with their medication regimen. The various factors that interfere with medication adherence and compliance include: social/economic-related factors such as age, race, economic status, literacy and costs; individual factors such as forgetfulness, treatment anxiety, misunderstood instructions and fear of addiction; medication-related factors such as the length or complexity of the treatment and the side-effects of the medication; and condition-related factors such as comorbidities and disabilities, and the overall severity of the condition.
By some estimates, up to 50% of patients are noncompliant to some extent, making it difficult for doctors to assess if a medication regimen is effective. If the patient is not accurately or truthfully reporting his or her compliance, doctors do not have a means of obtaining more accurate information. Furthermore, patient tracking of which medications to take and when can be cumbersome and can be confusing for some patients.
There are various techniques and systems for assisting patient adherence. For instance, processes are known for electronically transmitting prescriptions to a pharmacy, and the pharmacy automatically delivering the medication to the patient or sending reminders to the patient. Certain packaging is also known for aiding patient compliance, for example the PILLPACK available from PillPack, Inc. While these prior art approaches help the patient achieve compliance, doctors still do not know if the patient ever opens the package or takes the medication as prescribed.